U.S. Backs Payment for Soldier in LSD Tests

AP

Published: July 12, 1991

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., July 11—
The Defense Department has dropped its opposition to compensation for a former Army sergeant who was unwittingly subjected to experiments with LSD and other drugs in the 1950's.

In a letter received Wednesday by Representative Jack Brooks, the Texas Democrat who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the chief Pentagon attorney, Terrence O'Donnell, said the Defense Department no longer objected to a House bill to compensate the former soldier.

"I'm just tickled to death over it," said the former soldier, James B. Stanley, 57 years old, of nearby Palm Springs, Fla.

Representative Harry A. Johnston, a Florida Democrat who sponsored the bill to pay Mr. Stanley $625,000 in damages, said, "I think they threw in the towel."

Although the Defense Department agreed to pay the monetary award, Mr. O'Donnell said that $625,000 was excessive and that Mr. Stanley had failed to demonstrate specific damages on which to base the award.

Mr. Stanley, a jail shift commander for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, was a 24-year-old Army staff sergeant when he volunteered to test protective clothing in 1958. Instead, he was directed to drink a clear liquid he believed to be water and talk to interviewers.

Mr. Stanley says he experienced behavioral changes that affected his job and destroyed his marriage. He said he did not learn the true nature of the experiments until 1975, when he received in a letter from military doctors studying the soldiers given LSD.

Mr. Stanley filed a lawsuit in 1977. In 1987, the Supreme Court rejected his claim 5 to 4, citing a law that protects the military from lawsuits by soldiers. Two years later, Representative Johnston filed his bill.